The First Lie (2 page)

The plancher flew to the
2
, then the
7
.

“Are you buried out here in the graveyard?”

NO.

“How did you die?” Henry Allen asked.

The plancher just sat there. My fingertips was hardly touching it, and I could see Henry Allen’s hands was shaking.

“Maybe that’s too personal,” I said, but then the plancher started moving again.

R-I-F-L-E
, it spelled, and I shuddered. I glanced at Henry Allen. He was chewing his lip.

“Who shot you?” Henry Allen asked.

I-N-B-E-D
.

“Who’s that?” I whispered to Henry Allen.

“She must mean it happened in her bed.”

I pictured a lady with her head blown off, blood all over her sheets. Before I could get that picture out of my mind, something hit one of the church windows with a
bonk!
We both jumped.

“What was that?” I whispered.

Henry Allen leaned forward, talking so quiet, I could hardly hear him. “I forgot something,” he said.

“What?”

“We was supposed to say a prayer first. To protect us.”

“Is it too late?” My arms was shaking from holding my fingertips steady on the plancher.

“You have to say it before you start,” Henry Allen said. “That’s what Desiree told me.”

“Well … maybe we can change the subject?” I spoke real quietly. “Maybe we can ask her other things, just not about herself. So we don’t upset her.”

“Okay,” Henry Allen said. He glanced toward the window, where the sound had come from, then back at the board. “What do you want to ask?”

I wanted to know if she knew Daddy in the spirit world and how he was doing, but I was scared of the answer.

“I don’t know,” I said. “You ask her something.”

Henry Allen thought for a minute. “Who’s going to win the World Series this year?” he asked finally, and I laughed.

“How’s she supposed to know that?”

“Shh.”

I was glad he asked something silly that would clear them
R-I-F-L-E
and
I-N-B-E-D
answers out of my head. We watched as the plancher slipped around the board, spelling out
Y-A-N-K-E-E-S,
which happened to be Henry Allen’s favorite team. I glanced at his face and saw he was grinning, but the shadows made him look evil, so I quick looked at the board again.

“Will I ever get to play for them?” he asked. The plancher went right to the
NO.
“Aww,” he said, “dang it.” He loved baseball. Every boy I knew loved it.

“Your turn,” he said to me. “You ask her something.”

“Okay.” I concentrated hard on the board. “How many kids am I gonna have, Ruby?” I asked.

The plancher moved between the
3
and the
4
. “What’s that mean?” I asked Henry Allen.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Maybe one of your kids’ll be a half-wit.” He laughed and I was glad he didn’t add nothing about Mary Ella. Some kids called her a half-wit or worse. I hated when they did that, even though it was mostly true.

“Ruby,” I said, “is Mary Ella’s baby a girl or a boy?”

“She don’t know that!” Henry Allen said.

“How do you know what she knows? She told you about the World Series.”

“Everybody knows about baseball,” he said, “but she don’t even know who Mary Ella is.”

“It’s moving!” I said, and we watched as the plancher spelled out
B-O-Y
plain as day and right fast.

“See?” I said. “She
does
know.” I thought I’d try another question. “Ruby,” I said, “how many kids is Mary Ella going to have?”

The plancher didn’t move right away. Then slowly, very slowly, it slipped across the board to the
0.

“Well, that sure ain’t right.” I laughed. “She don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Don’t laugh at her,” Henry Allen said. “You’ll make her mad. She’s already peeved ’cause someone killed her in her bed.”

“Shh! Don’t talk about it.”

“You got any more questions?” he asked.

I nodded. I had one more that I was almost afraid to ask—the question that had been making me and Nonnie crazy for months and months. “Ruby,” I said, “who’s the daddy of Mary Ella’s baby?”

“Don’t keep asking about Mary Ella,” Henry Allen said.

But the plancher thing started moving. It went to the
E
, the exact place I didn’t want it to go. When it headed toward the
L
, I jerked my hands off it before it could get there.

“You’re not supposed to take your hands off!” Henry Allen hissed at me. “The spirit’ll get stuck here if you do that and she’ll haunt us forever.”

I was too shook up to care. “You was right.” I folded my arms across my chest. “She don’t know nothing about Mary Ella.”

“Come on. Put your fingers back on. We won’t ask her no more about things like that. Do you want to know anything about your Daddy?”

Henry Allen could always talk me into things. I put my fingertips on the plancher again. “Let’s just ask her more questions about herself, only not about the … you know”—I lowered my voice—“the dying part.”

So we asked her about her people and where she grew up, but the plancher didn’t budge. Ruby was done talking to us. It was worse than when she told us about getting killed, because every time we asked a question and waited for her answer, something brushed against the windows and it started to sound like ghosts to me. Like they was trying to get in.

“I think when you took your hands off, she got mad,” Henry Allen whispered. “You asked a question and then didn’t listen to her answer and instead got her stuck here forever. And now we’re doomed.”

“Don’t say that!” I leaned across the board to hit his arm. I was afraid he was right. I felt Ruby inside the church with us, swooping around our shoulders. I felt her brush past my hair. Our lanterns flickered and the darkness was like a thick black blanket coming down over us. “How can we get her back where she belongs?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Put your fingers on it again.”

I did.

“Ruby,” Henry Allen said, “we’re right sorry we messed you up. We didn’t mean nothing by it. Can we help you get back where you belong?”

The plancher didn’t move at all and the dark blanket fell tighter over us, making it hard to breathe. All of a sudden, for no reason at all, Henry Allen’s lantern blew out.

“Shit!” he said, scrambling to his feet. “Let’s get out of here!” He grabbed the board and the plancher and I grabbed my lantern and we ran for the door and out into the graveyard, heading for our bikes.

“Pray!” he said as he jumped on his bike. “Pray real hard!”

I rode after him, saying the Lord’s Prayer over and over again, but I could still feel Ruby swooping around me, her breath, hot and damp and nasty on my neck, and I started to cry.

We didn’t stop pedaling till we got to Deaf Mule Road where it ran through the Gardiners’ farm. I wiped the back of my hand over my eyes as we got off our bikes. My heart was still pounding hard and I had no wind at all, but moonlight rested on the empty brown fields and they looked beautiful to me. They looked like home.

Henry Allen laughed. “We just scared ourselves silly for no good reason,” he said, like he didn’t believe anything that had just happened.

“What do you mean, ‘no good reason’?” I asked. “What do you think made your light go out?”

“Gust of wind.”

“A gust of wind inside the church?”

“I’m just saying it was all our imagination, what happened back there,” he said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “Look how windy it is tonight. The door was unlocked, so maybe a window was part open, too. Who knows?” We started walking our bikes up the road so we could talk. It was real dark out, but I could still see the outline of his face. He’d been my best friend my whole entire life, but every once in a while, I’d catch a look at him and see him like he was new to me and it would make me feel shy all of sudden. Lately, I’d been wondering how it would feel to kiss him. I was sure he wasn’t thinking no such thing himself.

We was quiet for a bit and I felt like maybe we lost Ruby somewhere on our wild bike ride. All that praying we did probably got rid of her. I never prayed that hard in my life.

“You know it
could
be Eli,” Henry Allen said as we walked. “You got to face that fact.”

I shook my head. “If that baby comes out colored … I don’t know what’ll happen. Mary Ella will ruin everything. Your daddy’ll kick us off the farm, just for starters.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

It was amazing Mr. Gardiner hadn’t kicked us out of the tenants’ house already. An old lady and two girls wasn’t much use on the farm, and soon one of them girls would have a baby to take care of. We wasn’t like Eli Jordan and his family that lived in the other tenants’ house. They was a hardworking bunch of boys, for sure. We all used to play together—me and Henry Allen and Mary Ella and all the Jordan kids. We’d fish or play tag or ball. That was before we got old enough that “mixing the races,” as Nonnie called it, wasn’t right. I had the feeling Mary Ella never got that message.

“It could be anybody’s baby,” Henry Allen said. “You know how Mary Ella is.”

“But Ruby said…” I shut up, worried that if she was still around us, she might perk up at the mention of her name. “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s not talk about it no more.”

We split up then, him riding to his house, me riding to mine, and by the time I got home, I’d nearly forgotten about Ruby altogether, especially when I heard Mary Ella screaming for Mama and Nonnie shouting at me to call Mrs. Werkman. Now, as I rode my bike to the Gardiners’ house, the wind howling around my head, I wasn’t thinking about anything other than my sister, all tore up with pain. What Mrs. Werkman could do for her, I couldn’t figure, but we needed some kind of help, for sure.

The Gardiners’ farmhouse was dark. Even the little stuck-on room at the back—Desiree’s room—was dark, and I guessed Henry Allen had already got the Ouija board back where it belonged and was up in bed. As I got closer, though, I could see a flickering light coming from one of his windows and knew he hadn’t got into bed quite yet.

You could fit about six of our little houses into the Gardiners’ house. I dropped my bike in the dirt, then ran up the front steps to the big porch and rang the bell. It made a buzzer sound that I could hear through the door. I pressed it twice but no one came. Then I knocked and waited another minute before I finally started pounding on the glass window in the door. I’d never done nothing like that before—wake the Gardiners up in the middle of the night. Mr. Gardiner being a farmer and all, he’d be getting up soon anyway, but not this early.

Through the glass, I saw Henry Allen coming down the stairs in the same overalls he’d had on when I left him. His mother was right behind him. Henry Allen gave me a panicky look when Mrs. Gardiner opened the door, like he was worried I’d gone crazy and was going to say something about the Ouija board and get us both into trouble.

“Ivy!” his mother said. “What’s the matter?” She had on a blue robe and her dark hair was loose around her shoulders instead of in the bun she always wore.

“I think Mary Ella’s going to have the baby.” I was winded from the ride and the words came out in a rush. “And Nonnie told me to come over to call Mrs. Werkman, but I think she’s confused and I should really call Nurse Ann, don’t you?” The Gardiners knew Mrs. Werkman and Nurse Ann. They knew pretty much all there was to know about my family. We’d lived on their farm since Daddy was a little boy.

“Come in, dear.” She reached for my hand and drew me into the house. “You’re ice cold!” she said, wrapping both her hands around mine. I’d forgotten my gloves. “Henry Allen, you put some milk on to heat. This girl needs something to warm her up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Henry Allen said, but before he walked away, he gave me a look that said
Don’t say a thing about tonight
, like I might of. It made me mad he thought I was that stupid.

“How close is she?” Mrs. Gardiner asked. “Mary Ella? How close to having the baby?”

I shivered. “I don’t know how to tell, ma’am,” I said. “But she’s hollerin’ a lot and—” I thought of how Mary Ella’s hair looked like a halo, how her spirit might be leaving her body right this minute, and my voice closed up. “Nonnie said to come over here fast,” I said. “But she said to call Mrs. Werk—”

“Yes,” Mrs. Gardiner said. “I believe she’s right, except that Mrs. Werkman’s office will be closed until morning, so—”

“I have the number for her house,” I said, pulling the card from my coat pocket. “But she ain’t no nurse. Nurse Ann always said she’d come when it was time for the baby.”

“Don’t be troubled, dear.” Mrs. Gardiner smiled one of them
I’m a grown-up and I know what’s best
smiles. “Come into the kitchen.” She wrapped her robe closed tight and led me toward their kitchen, an arm across my back. Henry Allen already had the milk heating in a pan on the stove. He glanced at me, looking less nervous than before, now that he knew I wasn’t there to get us in trouble.

Mrs. Gardiner sat me down at the table and put the phone in front of me. “Nurse Ann is in agreement,” she said. “Mr. Gardiner and I spoke to her and your grandmother and we all feel that Mrs. Werkman can arrange Mary Ella’s care best.”

I shook my head. “She ain’t no nurse!” I felt like everybody except me had lost their minds. “This is an emergency. Mary Ella needs a nurse!”

Henry Allen poured the milk into a mug and put it on the table in front of me. I could smell the night on him—the wintry air and the scent of the church—but Mrs. Gardiner didn’t seem to notice.

“Would you like me to make the call for you?” she asked.

Again, I shook my head. I felt funny calling Mrs. Werkman in the middle of the night, but I was afraid Mrs. Gardiner couldn’t explain it good enough. She was acting way too calm to describe the mess Mary Ella was in. I dialed the phone—it was only the third time I’d used a phone in my life. It rang for a long time. Nine or ten rings, and Mrs. Werkman sounded half asleep when she answered.

“This is Ivy Hart,” I said.